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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26535547">The Library Divine</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/faerymorstan/pseuds/faerymorstan'>faerymorstan</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Library, Discord: The People's Tomb (Locked Tomb Trilogy), Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 06:16:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>821</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26535547</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/faerymorstan/pseuds/faerymorstan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The Library Divine! First and most many-faceted jewel of the Empire, Memory Infallible of the Prince Undying! Monument Eternal wherein dwelt the knowledge and the power of the necromantic kingdom, marvel upon glorious marvel of bone-like marble and marble-like bone, volumes beyond number on shelves themselves innumerable! Its walls were towering, its halls legion, its eight original libraries unique yet joined together in a single and sacred structure from which the Houses extended like holy radii.</p><p>Which was why it sucked absolute balls that Gideon Nav, bondservant to said Library since before she was old enough even to crawl away, had been assigned to the Ninth.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>40</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Library Divine</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>for the people's tomb fic jam prompt: "pride"</p><p>blended with: okay but what if instead of the Houses being on a bunch of different planets there was, like, a giant fuck-off library on the First, and all of the Houses were built up like scuffling lil feudal states around it, and the library was a Big Deal Because Reasons?</p><p>also i'm apparently writing again. slowly. REAL slowly. keep them hopes down. hi. *tired, weeny wave*</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Library Divine! First and most many-faceted jewel of the Empire, Memory Infallible of the Prince Undying! Monument Eternal wherein dwelt the knowledge and the power of the necromantic kingdom, marvel upon glorious marvel of bone-like marble and marble-like bone, volumes beyond number on shelves themselves innumerable! Its walls were towering, its halls legion, its eight original libraries unique yet joined together in a single and sacred structure from which the Houses extended like holy radii.</p><p>Which was why it sucked absolute balls that Gideon Nav, bondservant to said Library since before she was old enough even to crawl away, had been assigned to the Ninth.</p><p>The Ninth was never meant to become a library. It had been established as remote storage: a place where the most pointless, shitty, ancient books of the eight libraries proper were punted off to die unsorted in darkness; an unattended bone-and-concrete basement crouched so far below the main structures that even the most devout scholars, should they hear that a title they sought had been entombed there, would <em>Nuu</em> a mournful <em>Nuu</em> and strike it from their bibliography rather than face the soul-puckering descent.</p><p>Except that a million dusty-ass years ago ("'<em>At a time in history now forgotten to our sorrow</em>,'" Liege Librarian Harrowhark Nonagesimus corrected in Gideon's resentful head, "because a myriad can hardly contain a million, you cart-pushing simpleton"), some librarian – it was always a librarian, probably because cart-pushing simpletons like Gideon generally avoided being so clever that they looped right back around and became illicit-library-founding morons – had for reasons unknown taken it upon herself to turn eight libraries' and untold years' worth of unwanted biblio-matter into a freaking <em>shrine</em>. Books that none of the other libraries had wanted now stood organised into a collection that nobody had asked for, an altar to "no but why the fuck would you even" kept pristine by a long and resting-bitch-faced line of necro-librarians who tended their discarded flock in obdurate solitude, prideful in their obsolescence, visited only by retainers (a flu had taken most of the topside Ninth when Gideon was young) and the occasional <em>fwoomp</em> of incoming volumes as they hit the bottom of the rubbish chute.</p><p>Which would make Gideon sad if she stopped to think about it, so she didn't. Instead she attacked her face with as little paint and as little grace as she reckoned Aiglamene would accept, shut the door to her cell behind her, jangled her way down the ten billion stairs that separated the Ninth from anywhere that anyone gave a shit about – there was a freight elevator, but it was just as tragic as all other things Ninth, and when it inevitably hurtled to a <em>cronch</em>ing end Gideon was not going to be on it, thanks – and girded her figurative loins as she pushed open the library doors.</p><p>The Ninth library was as cold and as full of bones as someone else's grave, which was normal. It smelled like a battalion of dust had smothered Dominicus just for funsies and then decorated the place with the corpse, which was also normal. And it contained a Harrowhark Nonagesimus who, having positioned herself in exactly the right place to turn Gideon's arrival into her own dramatic entrance (which Gideon had to admit was <em>peak </em>Harrow), lurked in a stiffly formal black vestment and a posture of unmistakable supplication – which was, even for the weird-ass Ninth, not normal at all. Gideon, whose face and arms crawled with cold sweat and whose stomach fell like the elevator she had so recently eschewed, suppressed a grimace as her skin prickled with <em>nope</em>.</p><p>"Gideon Nav," said Harrow, who was not merely a twig that had snapped to malign life but a twig that had snapped to malign life for the express purpose of pounding Gideon, ceaselessly, in her heart's arse, "bondservant to the Library Divine, thrall of the Ninth, you have been summoned, and you will obey."</p><p>"Um," said Gideon, who raised her eyebrows and struggled to decide between <em>Fuck no</em> and <em>Fuck no, bitch</em>, at which point Harrow added, "Please."</p><p>This was not a healthy <em>please</em>. It had not grazed under Dominicus on hectares of green grass nor sipped from pristine glacier-fed streams, breezes warm and pleasant rippling its well-kept mane. It had instead stumbled, anaemic, from the pointy hellscape that was Harrow's stupid face, groped its way through the molar-strewn wreckage that was Harrow's stupid mouth, and collapsed, trembling, with a wet organic <em>splat</em> halfway between Gideon's crossed arms and Harrow's stupid cracked and bloodied lips.</p><p>But it existed, and it existed because Harrow had willed it to exist, and for that reason and that reason alone Gideon said, like it was no big deal or anything, "Yeah, okay."</p><p>Harrow stared. Gideon shrugged. Harrow kept staring, which on the one hand was kind of weird, but on the other, <em>Harrow</em>.</p><p>"Then we begin posthaste," Harrow commanded, ruining everything. "Follow me."</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><div class="children module" id="children">
  <b class="heading">Works inspired by this one:</b>
  <ul>
    <li>
        <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29245887">[Podfic] The Library Divine</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shmaylor/pseuds/Shmaylor">Shmaylor</a>
    </li>
  </ul>
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